"If you are selling a box on your website designed to trick users into thinking broken add-ons come from us and work perfectly, so you can make a buck, we're going to do everything we can to stop you."

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Several sellers in the UK have already been arrested and charged with breaching of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act. Some have been fined while others have been given prison sentences

The XBMC Foundation is also going after people posing as Kodi experts on YouTube who use the trademark without permission.

"If you are making a video in which you claim to be a Kodi developer or Kodi team member or you are just using the Kodi name while assuring users that some pirate add-on is totally legal and isn't going to break next week, we will do everything we can to take you down," said Betzen.

"Most of all, we are tired of a thousand different salesmen and YouTubers making money off ruining our name.

"And there are even more people out there seeking to make a quick buck by selling ads on videos about getting free movies and TV while using Kodi in their channel name to make their content seem official, as if those videos are coming from us."

Digital Rights Management

Kodi's other approach is to offer support for Digital Rights Management (DRM).

DRM is a technology that enables content publishers to enforce their own access policies on content, such as restrictions on copying or viewing.

It is unpopular with consumers, as it effectively reduces the usability of the content by making it more difficult to duplicate or play back on different types of devices.

Illegal streaming pay-per-view content on Kodi could land you in hot water

However, the XBMC Foundation believes that adding "low-level DRM" to its platform could help it gain trust from content publishers, by allowing them to offer their videos in a protected environment.

"We work hard every day to distance ourselves and Kodi from all the piracy related talk," the organisation wrote in a blog post.

"Unfortunately, the buzz surrounding Kodi and piracy is so great that content publishers don't want to work with us.

"From our perspective, supporting low-level DRM is a first step to changing that."

It added that the technology for playing DRM content would not be built into Kodi itself.

Rather, the XBMC Foundation would attempt to create an interface between Kodi and existing software in Android and Chrome that is capable of playing DRM content.